Rethink: the surprising history of new ideas

Summary

Rethink is the story of how old ideas that were mocked or ignored for centuries are now storming back to the cutting edge of science and technology, and informing the way we lead our lives. It's the story of Grace Hopper, the programming language pioneer who allowed us to speak to computers; of Ignaz Semmelweis, the brilliant doctor who worked out how infections occur long before there was a proper germ theory of disease, and was committed to an asylum for his trouble; of Democritus, the laughing philosopher who inferred the atomic foundations of reality just by thinking about bread.